Michelle Mone

Biography

Michelle Georgina Mone, Baroness Mone, (née Allan; born 8 October 1971) is a Scottish businesswoman and life peer. She has set up several businesses, including MJM International Ltd in 1996 and the lingerie company Ultimo along with her then husband Michael Mone. Other ventures include naturopathic 'weight-loss' pills, a fake tan product via Ultimo Beauty, overseas residential development and cryptocurrency. Mone became a Conservative life peer in 2015. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Mone's husband's company, PPE Medpro, was awarded £200 million of contracts to provide personal protective equipment (PPE) by the UK government. The company made a profit of £60 million and some of the products they provided were defective and went unused. From 2020 to 2023, Mone vehemently denied that she or her husband had any involvement with the contracts. In January 2022, the House of Lords Commissioner for Standards and National Crime Agency launched investigations into Mone's links to the contracts. Mone announced in December that year that she was taking a leave of absence from the House of Lords "to clear her name" amid the allegations. Shortly afterwards the UK government announced plans to sue PPE Medpro for £122 million plus costs over the defective items. In December 2023, Mone disclosed that she had been involved with PPE Medpro and claimed she had previously denied it to protect her family. In February 2024, a leak revealed that five months prior to £29 million of PPE Medpro's profits being transferred into a trust that Mone would benefit from, she assured the government that she would not gain "any financial benefit whatsoever", and that there were "no conflicts whatsoever" with regard to the company she had recommended to the government.

== Early life == Born on 8 October 1971, Michelle Allan grew up in Dennistoun in the East End of Glasgow. She recounted how she had lived with her family in a one-bedroom house with no bath or shower until she was 10 years old. She also told of how her younger brother, who had spina bifida, died at the age of eight, when she was 10 years old, and that her father, who was suffering from cancer, lost the use of his legs when she was 15. She left school aged 15, with no qualifications, to pursue a modelling career.

== Business career == Mone obtained a marketing job with the Labatt brewing company when she was 19 and, within two years, had risen to become its head of marketing in Scotland. She has since said that she invented qualifications to help get the job there. She was then made redundant by the company, prompting her, at the age of 23, to set up her own business using the redundancy compensation she received from Labatt.

=== MJM International === In November 1996, Mone founded MJM International with her then-husband Michael. In August 1999, Mone launched the Ultimo lingerie brand at Selfridges department store in London. Mone came up with the idea for the Ultimo bra, the brand's first product, when she was wearing an uncomfortable cleavage-enhancing bra one day and believed she could create a more comfortable cleavage-enhancing bra. Mone had read about a new silicone product while on holiday in Florida and approached the company to obtain its European licence to produce bras. Mone has claimed that an Ultimo bra was worn by Julia Roberts in the Hollywood film Erin Brockovich, but this was denied by the film's creators. Ultimo went on to include other products, such as backless dresses and shapewear, which led to MJM International's growth. Mone portrayed herself as rich and successful but the accounts of MJM International show that between 2007 and 2009 she exaggerated about the turnover and number of staff employed by the business. The Independent estimated she would have earned £250k before tax in 2008, but she also borrowed £600k from the business. By 2011 the company had a turnover of £8.4m but was not profitable. Mone left MJM International briefly in 2013 following the breakdown of her relationship with her then husband. The business assets were transferred to its parent firm, Ultimo Brands International Ltd, in a partnership with MAS Holdings. MJM International was then dissolved. In November 2014, Mone sold 80% of her stake in Ultimo Brands International to MAS Holdings. In 2014, a former operations director for MJM won a claim for unfair dismissal from her company after discovering that Mone had authorised electronic bugging of his office. Mone threatened to sue her critics when it was revealed her company MJM International had paid a substantial sum of money into a controversial tax avoidance scheme, criticised by Chancellor George Osborne as "morally repugnant". Following a test case brought by HMRC against Rangers Football Club, the scheme utilising an employee benefit trust (the type of tax avoidance scheme used by MJM International) was exposed as ineffective in November 2015. Mone said she had "not done anything wrong" in relation to tax avoidance and that her ex-husband had "dealt with all the finance". In August 2015, Mone resigned her directorships of both MJM and Ultimo, saying she had sold 80% of the latter.

=== TrimSecrets and weight loss === TrimSecrets were weight loss pills formulated by the "naturopath" Jan de Vries. The product also used diet and exercise advice. In 2006 MJM formed a joint venture with de Vries, taking a 50% share in the product. Mone claimed that exercise and reduced calorific intake had no effect on her weight and credited TrimSecrets pills for her weight loss. Mone falsely claimed the efficacy of the product had been proven in clinical trials. However, when questioned further, she said that approximately 60 users had completed a questionnaire but was unable to produce the results. In October 2013, Jan de Vries sold his interest in the company with Mone having 60% of the business and a silent business partner the remaining 40%. In August 2015 it was reported that the company had made a loss in each of the last four years for which accounts were available. In November 2015, Mone was criticised for using her "Baroness Mone"-styled Twitter account to promote TrimSecrets pills, although a spokesman for Mone said she had disposed of her ownership of the firm before her tweet. A spokesman for the British Dietetic Association said "there is no scientific basis or rationale for these products, they are making claims which are unfounded and feeding into public confusion around nutrition and pseudo-science." On the ITV programme Loose Women in 2020, Mone said she lost weight during the COVID-19 lockdown by exercising three times a day. She stated: "When I was overweight and in a very uncomfortable horrible marriage, my way of coping with that was to continuously eat."

=== Ultimo Beauty/Ubeauty Global === In 2012 Mone's company, Ultimo Beauty, launched a fake tan product. In 2014 when announcing that she had sold most of her stake in Ultimo, she confirmed she had taken 100% control of Ubeauty Global, consisting of the assets of Ultimo Beauty. In 2016, after she was made a peer, Mone changed the company formation so that it no longer had to publish public trading accounts. In February 2017 accounts for the company were published, covering the time from 2014 to 2016 and it was revealed the company had assets of £23,000. In March 2017, Mone announced that she had sold the company.

=== Aston Plaza development === In 2017, Mone and her partner Doug Barrowman launched a £250 million residential development in Dubai which they claimed was to be the "first-ever development to be priced in bitcoin". In April 2019, The Sunday Times reported that the development was "on hold" with the construction incomplete, while a spokesman for Mone said that it was going "extremely well" and was in the process of being redesigned.

=== Equi cryptocurrency === In 2018, Mone and her partner Doug Barrowman launched a cryptocurrency called Equi through a company called Equi Capital. It aimed to raise $US80 million which would be invested in startup companies. Mone described herself as "one of the biggest experts in Cryptocurrency and Blockchain" and promoted the project as the "bitcoin of Britain". The company recruited 1,000 people to promote the cryptocurrency through social media, but they only raised £1,600. According to Barrowman, £5.4 million of tokens were sold in a "pre-sale offering" but the public sale beginning in March 2018 raised only £540,000. By August 2018, The Sunday Times reported that the project had "flopped" and all investors had been refunded. The Financial Times reported that it had "ended in a fiasco that exposes the total absence of oversight in the ICO market".